my first story collection in english -coming back

COMING BACK

“Would that love had the tongue so that the covers of lovers would come undone. When the tongue unfolds the secrecies and the ways of love, the heavens call out: O you, the concealer of love! Why do you conceal it? The wool and the cotton possess fire. The more you conceal them the more they manifest it.”

There was no computer at the time
‘You have forgotten her; no?’
‘Can’t say…’
‘But I can say confidently. She hasn’t been there anywhere within you for the last five months.’
In the dark of night Tarana’s voice felt icy-cold..
‘Why should you believe so?’
She laughed out softly. ‘For, that world is only a make-believe one — a fairy land. And a fairy land is for children only. But when men like you go there, you carry along with a lot of suppressed desires that you can’t share with your wives even’ ….She became a bit serious… ‘But to forget her just in five months!? Sanyal, at least you must keep from taking after the mould of other men.’
The dark over powered me. The dark that, in spite of my quietly coming out onto the balcony, has over-powered the whole of my existence. All that had happened all of a sudden, … all the things. The whole world around me changed, and completely so. Time that had been moving on like rising waves, seemed to have acquired a magic wand in its hand. Time waved it. ‘Stop, you moving age! Stop there…. No. Recede back.’ Sailing in his middle age, on the threshold of his forties, the person was a young man once again. Time waved the magic wand once again. A very beautiful young lady was standing there…
Perhaps no magic wand was needed there. As soon as we entered that world, we grew romantic. It was the world where you just switched on a common electric button, there stood open all the doors of internet on the computer screen…
There was no magic here…
No magic box here.
No horse of age… Only a river flowing along the magical fairy land. There was the bazaar of beauty. And suddenly, like a supernatural happening, there was a girl belonging to any country, any religion,any community; and she asked you,
‘Do you like romantic chat?’
A fancy of the fairy land, emerging out of the fairy land, would brighten up, with all its elegance on the CAM or the Net Camera. I would set the microphone wire in my ears. The sweet romantic sound of ‘Jalatarang’ … and…The flowing stream of the gaining on age, with all of its images and beats of bygone days would get obliterated…
Perhaps, the world was not so shrunk then… The moon was shining in the sky. The sky was star sprinkled… Far away, …on the darkling sky a couple of floatin clouds were seen. But, the caravans of the twinkling stars stretched those clouds over themselves. And then leaving the moon and these caravans alone, those clouds proceeded on.
The computer did not exist then…
No internet was there… No mermaids were there…
The age had its own limits. And those limits couldn’t be moved forward or backward. But Love was there, even at that time ‘the platonic’ was perhaps more free then than it is now— the one that would settle down much deeper at heart than stray externally. The nights were moon-lit then. Should I look back, 16 years ago, some well defined cities of today would look like villages or small towns. No refrigerators, no telephones. Mobiles couldn’t be thought of. Despite their complexities and inconveniences the life in small towns was beautiful and lovely. Love had its own identity then. Had its own moods and manners, its own swellings of the sea. Like the rain-emanated scents of imagination, love
looked like a far high star shining in the sky, and it was not possible for every one to touch or even to see it.
But, perhaps, at the vulnerable stage of age, no sooner I befriended literature than the meanings of love changed for me. The keenly blowing wind that would carry you along with itself, and being blown away you couldn’t think, even in the least, what was happening to you. But your whole existence got submerged in that moment and felt the thrill of each and every moment.
And suddenly, in the small town, in the form of Tarana, I had the chance of feeling myself lucky. The deer-like Tarana. With the whole of her being, she was made or written for me only. After a few brief meetings the feeling of airy flights…—people were, perhaps, not so very cultured in small cities till the time… or, so very commercial. Things had begun to take wings, to get speed. From our college to our homes, the tales and stories were gaining circulation… Sanyal – Tarana……Tarana- Sanyal….
But, as it seems, both of us were full of rebellion. Or, the family members of both the houses were quite aware of the rebellion.
That day as Tarana met me, our love, gradually gaining momentum, was preparing itself to create a new chapter.
It was a small narrow stream that we were standing by. At some distance the keeper of a make-shift-shop was selling onions and potatoes. Two dirty young boys were laughing, looking at us… Tarana touched my hand: ‘Why didn’t you come home? You are frightened…’
No. I’m not frightened.’
‘Don’t tell a lie. You are frightened; perhaps because of the stories touching us are gaining circulation. Do you know…?’ She tightened her grip on my hand. ‘I keep awake all through nights. The house, doors, windows, all disappear, as if they were parts of a castle made up of airy nothing. The whole of my countenance gets transformed into a broad smile only. And you get transformed into a beautiful psychic being…. I hold your hand, kiss you, soar away far and high; and I am all an embodied joy… a trance. There is an old well within the inner courtyard. I come out stealthily and sit silently on its parapet. While the whole house is asleep, I keep looking at the moon. The moon sets and you… What’s this Sanyal?
The keeper of the small make shift shop called out, ‘Potatoes, ..Onions…’ Both the little dirty boys were still looking at us. Tarana’s hand tightened on mine;
‘Tell me…. What’s this?’
‘Should I?’
‘O yes, do.’
‘The levels of Dopamine and Norepinecrin have gained in you.’
‘What?’ Tarana was startled. ‘What is it?.... dopamine?’
‘A chemical, darling, that produces the feeling of pleasure or joy in the mind…?
‘Tarana smiled, ‘That means love…and that?
… and that? .. Nove… ‘Norepinecrin’
‘O yes, that very… so you are Sanyal… What’s that?
‘That also is a chemical that produces commotion and excitement at heart.?
Tarana gave a start, ‘So your love is just this much?... to watch the levels of dopamine and norepinecrin? Only this much is love? —an escape from literature to the world of chemistry…and that…
that happened to me!? At mid-night I opened the door and quietly got out of the house, just to look for you in the street. But then, I became aware of what I was doing. When I recollected, I got frightened. The whole of the street was deserted. Had people seen me at the time, who knows what they would not talk of me.’
‘Nothing. This shows the declining level of serotonin only.’
‘You mean…?’
‘The urge of sacrificing oneself for love… to the verge of insanity…’
‘Slap you I will…’ Tarana burst out laughing. The two boys too, looking at us, pealed with laughter. On the balcony the night was welllit. The stars were playing the game of hide and seek.
The emotions of sixteen years ago were ready to fall in showers, all at once. That long ago, only one name was there enshrined at heart and the mind — Tarana. And that name opened the doors of fragrance… In a vulnerable moment of solitude the swift-footed wind would cause a surge of excitement through the body, and then all my senses would be taken in thrall by a sentence of Tarana, “I know this much only that I must possess the object I love.”
It must be three o’clock at noon that day. As soon as I stepped on the threshold of my home, I came to know that Tarana was hospitalized. Passing on the news to me my sister-in-law looked at my face momentarily. My father, who was sitting silently on a cot, also shifted his glance onto my face. I put my books on the table standing nearby.
“I am going. I might not get back even at night.” Having uttered this much I got out of the room. I tried to, but it was difficult for me to guess the extent to which the level of chemicals — dopamine and Norepinecrin had shot up, or the level of serotonin gone down bringing her almost to a state of insanity
leading to her hospitalization. Anyhow, the condition could not be normal. In the pervious week itself, trying to get dissolved into every fibre of my being, she had shown the symptoms of the hard struggle that was undergoing within her. She had said:
“My breaths are breaking like the strings of pasta, and getting dispersed too. They want to see you all the time. Why do you go away Sanyal? Why don’t you keep with me in the way as stagnant time lives with me in my room at the time when thinking of you I get dissolved
in you.”
Her palms were the red-hot coal. Recovering herself she continued. “Sometimes, something like the mist fills up the room, and then lots and lots of things of the world seem to resound in my room. You get lost in the mist and then it feels the string of breathwill get snapped…Don’t go away please. Stay by me Sanyal before the strings of breath get dispersed.”
My feet moved fast. She was in the general ward. A couple of some other patients also were there besides her. As small cities have their own sense of history and courtesy, a number of women from her locality were also there around her. As she saw me, a strange delight that overspread itself on her face cannot be depicted in words. The next moment, despite the presence of other people and her own family members also in the general ward, she was in my arms…weak...sickly… She was trying to tell me that she could not speak, her voice was gone. I pressed her in my passionate embrace…. Tarana was crying. Holding her firmly against myself, and moving my fingers round her eyes very lovingly, I was saying:
“Assuredly I am here…your Sanyal… your voice. Didn’t you tell me I had the finest voice on earth and that no human voice could be sweeter than mine? At the present time you only have to listen to me, for I am the body, the voice and the soul for my Tarana…your voice. I’ll put the music of this voice on your lips, and your lips will be those of the most beautiful girl in the world. When you will converse with me in tune with my voice, the music created there by will be the sweetest one in the universe. But Tarana, today I am only an echo of yours. Feel my voice forgetting yours…
Tarana gathered up closer. Her hands felt firmer on my back. My shirt was getting soaked with sweat. As I lifted up her face, she was smiling — a smile that might be seen in a few of the finest masterpieces ever created.
I stayed on the bed next to hers in the general ward that night. It is known to all that the wind had wafted away the whiff of our odorous story through the small city. Now this story will take wings, disperse…but, perhaps, considering all the possibilities of the future I rested reassured.
The Net was not there at the time; mobiles also were not there. Even little common conveniences were far away from the general life. But the magic of love was there in all its profundity, and perhaps deeper than what it today is.
Outside, on the balcony the dance of stars continued in the milky shine of the moon. The young feeling that was there, sixteen years ago, stood revived.
But as any story began in the bygone days, the stories told by the maternal or paternal grandmother, a magic world would come alive in the wonderstruck eyes of the children lying on their beds
in the moon-lit night under the canopy of the blue heavens…There was a king…There was a queen… There was a demon…There was a magician… But, after sixteen years, in the modern world, the story will begin something like…There was a computer. A lake-fairy swam out on the Net. But there was no magic. Swimming on the water the fairy asked you, “Do you like romantic chat?”

What relations do you have with her?
Tarana came in my life. We became a part of the rush of the cosmopolitan. And then we begot a little son too. Despite being a part of the rush of the cosmopolitan, the writer at my heart neither died nor did he go into oblivion, for Tarana did not let it fall into a slumber even for a moment. Her love was neither transient nor false. After our marriage too, to her eyes, her Sanyal was her lover. In my journey from literature to serials, Tarana had sacrificed all that could be called hers. If there had occurred any change in her, it was the physical one; the change that would co-occur as the mother begot a novel form of
her love, giving it a separate entity in the world. The impressions of fulfillment in seeing the child grow, changed the girl in her into a woman. But in most of her essentials she remained Tarana only; the same Tarana of sixteen years ago. But one day:
A computer arrived in the house, and the Net connection too. And there began a new story.
Is it that despite your loving some one very much, there remains a void at heart to be filled up?— or, an inconspicuous suppressed desire to be
gratified? Is a person seeking to fill up some nooks of his sexual urges with the help of the Net, not a divided personality, despite his having a very loving wife and equally dear children?
The world of the Net was the world of desires that lurked at the hearts of unsatiated young men, the aged, and the adolescent with a dream to feel satiated. From Orkut to High forward, Love Happens…and the Dream Comes to COM, there is a big racket of boys and girls with fictitious names all over the world, participating in the concerns of all — from children to the aged.
But there was a sense of guilt too at my heart. Why should this world get populated for me when Tarana was there? After all, why should we cherish a desire to get acquainted with unknown girls?
And that too, not just one but a thousand of them — a vast world of them taking in its fold so many countries, communities, religions; the vast world of the internet.
‘Is it a sin to enjoy the vast pleasures, and satisfaction therefrom, that this magical electronic world offers?’ I ask myself. One part of my self answers, ‘No harm. They all do it’; but the other part cautions me, ‘The satisfaction isfalse. They leave you more thirsty than otherwise.’
Despite the immeasurable love of home and relations, the new technology has opened up a new fountain head of unlimited love. You can no more be fully satiated with the homely love, for, you begin to feel the need of lots and lots of it. The sex urge, that was erstwhile checked by moral and cultural codes, has attained explosively violent dimensions…. But, perhaps the world besides ugly faces, has normal and very beautiful faces also... In addition to the evil there is much good too. In addition to the sex there is an urge to knowand understand one another. And one day suddenly…
As soon as I opened the Net I received a message on Yahoo screen. And, dear readers, there began this story. The message read: My name is Mahak. Mahak Ahmad. A resident of Lahore. Aged 23. Mother expired when I was five only. Thereafter I fell in the habit of two things— reading literature and telepathy. I read a story written by you. And then had to spend a month looking for your e-mail ID. I don’t have much time at my disposal to tell you all. It seems the whole of the system is poised to take a flight, the fastest one. I fell in love with you without any premeditations, for I have been touched by your story to the core of my heart. I would love you even if you were eighty years of age. Should you receive my mail, please send a prompt reply. And, yes. I am putting in an ad on Yahoo messenger for you. If possible, please do come in the evening. You know there is a difference of thirty minutes between Pak and Indian timings. Will you come? Yours Mahak.
God knows how many times I read the message. Just kept on reading it. In the world of literature and serials I had received so many letters before this one, had come across so many girls, but this e-mail made me feel flying in the air; as if the blood in my body were running faster… ‘Even if you were eighty years of age….’ The eyes went through the line again and again. ‘I am 23.’ Was there present within me a man with unsatisfied desires? Or, there was a man reaching 40 who felt pampered with the thought he could still be loved by a girl aged 22 or 23… I don’t know what the moment was, or what sentiments
had taken possession of me, by the time I wrote ‘Yours Sanyal’, I had sent the e-mail.
That very evening, for the first time, she came on Yahoo messenger, and it seemed as if the world, like some fairyland, had opened its doors for me…
A few mare days passed.
When you are in love, your love need not be declared. Its fragrance, like that of civet; makes itself known. The whole of your behaviour shows it. Many a time, presenting myself before Tarana, or while holding her in my arms I felt like a thief. But, as a man, I can tell you truthfully and honestly that at any
moment of my love to Tarana, Mahak did never have her presence within me. Does this mean that she was partially present in me while Tarana was wholly; or, was it because of Tarana’s love that although Mahak tried to occupy her place in my life she couldn’t? Or, remaining tied to a family was a compulsion on me? Or, in this glamorous world of the Net.
when do we meet physically? Perhaps, this excuse put heart in me, to some extent. But, although it was across the border, Mahak was present physically and of her presence I had read in the Net CAM, was it love? Had, in any way, Tarana’s love faded? And was it because of that I had involuntarily been turned to Mahak? Or, the virility of a man crossing forty had been revived having gained the company of a woman, the woman who not only loved him but wanted to get him with all his physicality.
But, perhaps, it did not become necessary for me to keep the truth hidden from Tarana’s eyes. Because, like the jungle storm, one day she came to know the whole truth. She was silent for a while.
‘Do you also love her?’ Tarana’s words were ice-cold.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Perhaps you do…’ She took a deep breath… but, the very next moment her eyes regained their age-old love…, the same frenzy, the same passion. Once again she saved me from my entering the slough of guilt. While departing she said only this much, ‘How would you have felt had there been any boy in my life?’
‘Sanyal!’ — passing through the self imposed ordeal I asked myself, ‘Sanyal, what will you do? What will you do the next, Sanyal? Time is trying to carry you alongwith its flow, but there is some
strong feeling too as your heart deters you.’
In the evening as I set the Net on, Mahak Ahmad was there on the line. As AOA was on light she wrote, first of all, AOA — the greeting ‘Assalamu- Allaikum’. And then the stream of words would open the doors of new utopia, and at the moment I was perhaps in some world above the earth, and words of Mahak were nothing but fragrance.

From the chat-room
She asked. She asked a lot. She asked, which of the two — a bird and a dream– is the better one. The answer was ‘the bird’, because they breathe and they sing of love when it rains, or when it is ‘savan’: the month of rains and greenery all around. Dreams are unfaithful. They come; they vanish away too.’
She asked, ‘Why is it so that star, her favourite star, shining in the sky surpasses the moon?’
She asked, ‘Why aren’t you a rose, the one that I should pluck and then place by my heart; that you should pervade, like the fragrance, in my breath, my heart…’ ‘Why aren’t you a butterfly, the one that in my forgetfulness, having been maddened by the intoxication of pining for you, I should chase through
the beds of roses and having got my finger pricked should write in blood: ‘love’.
She asked, ‘Why aren’t you a raindrop, the first born of the season, that like a heavenly blessing should descend on my open, uplifted palm; and that I should kiss it and then place it on my head with a dream in my eyes —the dream of getting evaporated, to lose my identity and be one with you, getting
lost to the world.
She asked, ‘Before you stepped in my life, the world was not so very beautiful, or I had not perceived its beauty, why?’
She asked, ‘Why does a single moment not contain a million of moments within it? And those millions could enclose usand then forget to pass on!’
She said, ‘My death, if co-occurred with yours would be much more beautiful than this life is. Do come… taking my trembling hands in yours, close your eyes… for ever… with the sense of my being with you. My body, swaying in the most beautiful intoxication of life; my shining and singing eyes — when they open, they should open on an uninhabited island where there should be none but you, wherever I should
cast my eyes.’
And then she asked, ‘Listen, why did you get born so very early? – much more early than me… What a cruel revengeis it of yours? Well, you were born alright, but why didn’t you wait for me? Why
didn’t you care for my dreams… Why didn’t you hear my steps? For, I was always there in every particle of earth. In so many past, glorious years I was in no other form but fragrance. I was there, my soul. My shadow was there. It was only that you couldn’t perceive it.
She asked, ‘Why did you get married before I came? Why didn’t you wait for me?’
She asked, ‘Who are they that know you more than I do?... My fragrance should be there within you more than the impression of a flower, fragrance or dream. I should see you more than the wife, the sun or the moon does. I should touch you more than the blowing air does. I should descend upon your
being like a pleasant drizzle— the one that ran through life.
She said, ‘The palanquin of our lives be placed on the bed of flowers in an isolated island… and your arms like tender branches, be spread over my body…’.
And then she said, ‘Tell me the truth. Is there any one other than myself, breathing within you this moment?’ And after a moment’s hesitation asked, ‘Your wife?’
Let it be the dead silence or din, each has a poetry of its own. The air bears its own verses, fragrances, rhythm and tunes of love. It was possible that this story would not have taken birth. And, that too for a person like myself, that is, a person devoted to creation, whose unperturbed state of being could
be compared to that of the still waters, or the waves on the calm ocean.
But I beg your pardon. The time when this story begins is serious. And it is necessary that the present time and the human rights associated with it, be assigned the function of the witness. And much more necessary is the question arising at the heart of lovers, floating ambitiously over the waves of love, that why they are not birds or animals; and also, the watchful eyes of the Human Rights to watch if the community of menfolk is, in anyway, thwarting the rights of the womenfolk. But please, excuse me, Here there is no violation of human rights. Contrary to it there enters quietly a woman in the life of a man aged over forty, and leading a quiet married life. The woman was not a wife but a lover aged 22 whose eyes would transform into the rains, dreams and rainbows from time to time. Getting aside, she demanded, ‘Grant me my rights.’ The answer given was, ‘This right belongs to somebody else.’ Before she could exclaim ‘No’, she was as violent as a great river in flood could be.
‘No?’
‘If it were any other person’s right you would not be here. Tell me, why you are here. Why aren’t you there with the one who has the right?’
Perhaps she giggled…but she was still asking … and she asked… ‘Why do you feel so very frightened allowing me my own rights? Would I be here if you had lost your right to love? Near you? Near
your breath? In your movements…in your restlessness… in your worries…and in your fingers…that while typing on the computer get abstracted from the word to love, and from the word to a passionate persistence… from eyes to the dream, and from lips to the song.’
And then she said, ‘ Listen to me Flood!...I fly… I swim. On dewy imaginations I weave the webs of waves. Time flies like little butterflies with their colourful wings around me. Taking them to be the feel of yours I try to grasp them with my hands. Through the long long days I have wings on my body to fly in the rainbow sky. During the night, as I am flying with butterflies with feeling of being with you, I grasp the time with a feel of you, and tying it in a knot, conceal it in the coils of my hair…’
And then she asked, ‘ Does your son know that some one, besides his mother, has come into your life?’
This was the time when the heart of Venus throbbed, and the planet known as the ninth one in our solar system, Pluto, had been exiled.’
I closed the Net quietly. Anyhow, for a little while kept looking on at the blank screen of the computer. The letters were gone… No, they were shining… and the combinations of them was giving
shape to the face of a girl having come from some dreamland. Eyes were lost on the island that was Salan’s eyes…All the words on her flower-petal lips were for Salan only…The body trembled. I got up, opened the side-door and began to feel the words typed by Mahak. They seemed to peep from the blue sky across the balcony. I felt as if she were standing in front of me asking, ‘ How much do you love me?;—the words that were meteor shower; as if an explosion had occurred; as if a shiver ran through the spine…She, too, was looking at him with a smile that expressed pleasure and mystery, both, simultaneously.
‘Why don’t you speak? Tell me how much you love me.’
‘I don’t do any.’ I typed the few words. She burst out like the torrential rain.
‘You do, but you dare not…Well, how deeply does Tarana love you?’
‘Very.’
‘More than I do?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. She can’t do more.’ She seemed reassured. ‘No. None can love you more than I do — not even the heart that beats in your body; not even the eyes that would strike up a melodious tune of love just by casting a look ...and…and your lips that play with the name can love you to the extent that I do.’
Mahak stopped. The conflict arising at her heart could be seen on the CAP. A thousand shadows arose and drowned in her eyes…Once again her fingers were on the type. My heart throb took a leap because of a flood of unfamiliar questions arising there in.
She said, ‘Well, listen…How much has Tarana touched you? I too wish to get transformed into ‘Savan’, into the rains, into the wind that should pass touching you…How does Tarana play on your body
with her fingers?...Very gently? …Very quietly? — like the dew drops falling down the leaves? How much has she seen your body? How much has Tarana known…? Isn’t it only that much as much a woman, bound to the role that she has to play as a wife, could know? Isn’t it only that much as the pain or
hunger…there is at a time in the body…would warrant? Isn’t it only that much as much there is the fever of hunger and sex-urge together in the body at a time? But how much does she see you when the two bodies are one? How many dreams can she visualize in every hair on your body? How much can she
discover you in the commotions of your breath? Does Tarana see in you, or she doesn’t, a new flood in you? — a new song, a new dream and a new flood?...?
Mahak continued to type and it seemed as if I were bathing in the rains of wonder every moment. What is this? Why do I become so very helpless as soon as Mahak comes. The cacti of questions begin to raise their heads from me within… ‘You have a son aged twelve,… on the threshold of becoming a full grown youth. She is older by ten years only.’
Do you know the meaning of having crossed forty years of age if you are born in an Indian family? It means— a grave personality devoted to your family, the one who understood the responsibilities towards children. Having reached this age you emerge a mature person who is looked on by your society with reverence because the society knows this person is an invaluable symbol of our ideal society, is a representative. This person cannot love. And, to him, thinking of any extramarital love is nothing less
than his getting doomed. Here there is no room for any unexpected occurrences.
Even then Mahak had got in through the back door that had remained open, only god knows how. She had come in,and was asking for her full right to love.

Tarana and question
Love is eternal.
The tales of global and geographical changes also are true. In the race of progress and development, there is also a row of mysterious happenings standing along with our worldly race; from miracles to inventions, from the system of downloading a man’s brain to the cloning of the human being. In this world of inventions and miracles the heart of Venus ceased to throb long long ago. Only God knows how long ago the heavenly star, that was love, got eliminated from its orbit, got shattered into innumerable number of pieces and was dispersed through the solar system. Plato, the symbol of trust was also exiled by the observers of the celestial bodies. But the splinters of the star — that was love — getting attached and detached with the masses of ice, seemed to be posing questions before mankind, ‘why did love get lost? Where did love evaporate? Why did you arrive on the land of hundreds of thousand years ago where there would be no life, the sun sans its fire — just a cool spherical body, and the lifeless earth…? At that time there shone a spark, and emerged out a ray from the star that was love itself. And after centuries a love story took birth… in the age of inventions, mysteries and the Jurassic… in the form of Tarana, in the form of Sailaan, or in the form of Mahak Ahmad.
‘Well, what did you think?’ Tarana’s eyes were peeping into mine.
‘Don’t know.’
‘There is an honesty in you that you did not fail to disclose to me that you too love Mahak…’
I remained emotionless with my down cast eyes. ‘Well, tell me; do you have romantic talks too with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very much?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps you would hold her hand too if she were in front of you…’ Tarana’s tone was icy. ‘Perhaps.’
‘No. Not perhaps. You would. Or, possibly more than that…,’ she checked herself in the mid-sentence.
‘Sanyal!’ she continued, ‘Didn’t you remember me, even for a moment while talking to Mahak?... Suppose you spent three hours with her in a day, it comes to 90 hours in a month, yes? …Don’t you remember Sanyal…’ Tarana held my hands. Swayed by the tender recollections of the bygone days her eyes were misty. ‘Don’t you remember? —you used to say a man who met a woman other than his wife but with the same fervour of love… may be deemed as having dismembered a part of his body. A person who met some other one again and again, is as good as the one who has dismembered all his body parts. Didn’t you say that? And you also said how such a person can take his wife or his children in his arms if he has already lost his limbs.’ Tarana looked at him, smiled, ‘I hope you are intact Sanyal, for me and my children…’
At my heart, my own shriek, smeared with blood, lay loaded with slabs of ice. in a moment, fighting against my own desperation, I took a decision.
‘That’s the truth of the Net, not of the body…’
‘Oh…,’ Tarana laughed out amiably.
‘They all Net, Where is the person who doesn’t do? ‘And people don’t share their experiences with their wives even.’
‘I don’t know the people, my love. I know Sanyal only…’ There was not the least resentment in Tarana’s voice. ‘You said that was the truth of the Net. Had you had romantic chat with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Took her hand in yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Kiss…?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Not perhaps; say ‘yes’.’
‘Yes.’
‘On the lips?’
‘Yes…’
‘Well, let it be on the lips, the eyes… or as you like… for it is not easy to put into words how intense love is at a given moment, … but suppose you were before her … would you do all that Sanyal?’
‘But the condition is, if I were before her…’
‘You would turn into a ‘Tsunami. Isn’t it? Don’t get frightened Sanyal. Sometimes I feel like talking about petty things. Yesterday I kept thinking for a long time. After all where had I blundered?
Where did I leave a void within you in the past sixteen years? Where Sanyal? Tell me. But don’t think I’ll hinder you. I’ll just try to make you understand… for I have loved you. I have loved you intensely. It went all through my tender age. I won’t keep you from …. I will convince myself that my luck had only this much for me in store…. Where love falls under compulsion, is restrained, doesn’t remain love any longer…
selfishness comes in there…’
‘Then…?’
‘Tell me what you have thought about…’
My words got stuck to my throat. ‘Mahak wants to marry me…’
‘So…’
‘She says she will come to India…’
‘Ask her to come.’ Tarana took my hands in hers gently. ‘Ask Mahak to come.’
‘And you…?’
Tarana smiled mildly. ‘You know your Tarana. Never liked divisions ever since my childhood… placing Mahak’s hand in yours, I’ll quit quietly’. She turned away her face.
I felt ponderous thunderclaps operating at my heart. And during the moments that followed, there came before my eyes every aspect of Tarana’s beauteous face, her adornments — the sixteen year old Tarana. I felt, it was easy to slip into make-believe world, but very difficult to tread on the stony path of reality. While I was lost in my dreamy reflections. I felt as if I heard the soft musical sound of Tarana’s ankletwith bells, and in an instant, there was Tarana and Tarana only in my eyes, saying… ‘Then, do call her…’ I don’t know the reason why in the history of tales, till now, the wife is not the heroine. How is it that only the second or the third woman that comes in the life of a man is the heroine? Is it because offering her springs and dreams to her husband through the years of her youth, she gets lost somewhere? But, actually, having had her share in the history of the pleasures and pains of the household, she, in all her splendour, stands on the pedestal of the heroine supreme, having been observed and weighed every
moment. She is the fairy of the flowers. What is needed is the eyes that should recognize this flower-fairy. I was not in any sort of doubts. Detached from the waterfalls and rains of love, I was trying to study all the colours of this flower-fairy. And on that day, perhaps, my thoughts and sentiments reached Mahak. She asked me for the last time:
‘Tell me. Should I come to Delhi? I shall not be a burden on you, Sanyal, not even financially. I need your company only, the feel of your presence only. Yes or no, I demand your answer this very moment.’
There was no echo within me, neither that of a fire-work nor that of a blast.
Giving much thought to it, I typed quietly, ‘No.’
Mahak signed out. She didn’t meet again. Moments rolled on to cover months, unawares. Perhaps five months passed.
To die in your town
And after the five months—
Perhaps, this was the time when I was alarmed to see a meteor turn into a long line of brightness to get lost only. But, perhaps, such a void gives birth to an elegy. Or, such a love, once again, gives to the world such a masterpiece as the Taj Mahal. But perhaps, at that time I had no idea that the visualization of such images as an elegiac composition or the Taj Mahal by seeing a shooting star could disturb me to such an extent in the future.
Tarana would ask, ‘you forgot her. No?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Should she really have come, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You are telling a lie…’ Her eyes would grow mischievous by the touch of love. ‘Had she come you wouldn’t have been able to exercise any control on yourself.’
‘I can’t say.’
‘Why does it happen so? When everything is going on smoothly in life, there enters some one quietly?’ She hesitated momentarily and then added, ‘There was no shortfall anywhere, in any form. Perhaps, we had not left anywhere any void, even such a one as could be natural in the life of a married couple, like an unattended door, or a gap through which any one could jump in to reach
you. But, perhaps, a life that has been granted for once only…
There is a free sheet of paper also. A person feels no guilt or remorse writing the name of any other person on it. Because it is the most exclusive road lying in between the person and his soul, the road that your wife and your children are not allowed to walk along.
Tarana turned to him. “Well, suppose she should come suddenly and stand before you, then? What will you do Sanyal? Will you deny her? Will you ask her to turn back? Or, say, that you have no relations with her. Or, … tell me.’
So many missiles continued to be shot into the sky, simultaneously…
“Listen to what the flute says.
It complains of our separation”
(From the verses of Maulana Roomi)
It was a morning as usual. But, perhaps, not quite as usual. It couldn’t be as usual as other mornings for Sanyal in particular. Just a night ago there was a Mahal ke kho jane ka tazkera. Everything was normal a night ago. After high waves in the ocean there were deep whirlpools but there was quiet after it. The waves were calm. And suddenly on that bright morning so many stones had been hurdled into the water, and so many webs of the waves were formed in the river.
A knock at the door at 7 in the morning.
The door bell seemed to have brought in an unexpected storm. The boy who opened the door was looking wonderfully at the woman standing before him. Dusky face, sky-blue kameez and a salwar matching in colour. A dupatta hanging down the shoulders.
‘You are Asif, aren’t you?’
And as Tarana came, she embraced her and cried as a sister would.
‘And you are Tarana…? I am Mahak. From Pakistan. Came last night. Where is Sanyal?’
The room seemed to have been caught by a tremendous earthquake. The son, nonplussed, looked at her. Tarana’s eyes still innocent, or concealing their truth were looking at her. As I came out the two impatient eyes were transformed into the eyes of a stone image that emerges out in mystery stories. She was pointing towards me with her finger. Words were lost to her. The feelings or sentiments had transformed the face and the body into a book, such as no human soul had been able to behold as yet…
The voice of Mahak trembled. ‘Tarana, could the two of us be in seclusion for two minutes…Could we talk?
The son, somewhat frightened, was in his mother’s arms. Tarana, smilingvaguely, seemed to be saying… ‘O, yes; why not?”
But, perhaps, Tarana was not able to look into my eyes. Or, I could not muster up the courage to look at Tarana or the son. When and how she came and stood close to me, I couldn’t perceive.
‘Which room is yours?’ Her voice was cool. To my mind the fragrance from Pakistani garments was not different from the Indian ones.
The room was transformed into an object quite strange to the world. Deep within me there rose the waves of fire that seemed to burn my very existence, trying to turn everything to ashes. The words were lost, disappeared into a channel or a cave. It was difficult to conjure up my thoughts about my son or Tarana standing outside the room. A cold wave had taken the room inits folds.
She was touching me : every joint of the finger, the nails, my clothes, my body, my soul, or the soul of my souls.
‘You are Sanyal. No? How can I believe myself. No. I can’t be so very fortunate. You…so close…so very …close… No. Don’t stop me… let me touch you. These are your fingers…these your garments…I can see you, touch you. I am so close to you and… how is it that I am still alive… seeing you.. Sanyal? Would that death capture me, this very instant while I am seeing, feeling and living the thought of you. You never thought that Mahak could come here too. Isn’t it? — Toyour country, to your city, into your house. In the frenzy of my breaths, stealthily, I had made an enclosure and put you therein. I never gave a thought to the inconvenience you may incur by this act of mine. Aren’t you all right?... Why don’t you speak Sanyal?
‘How did you come?’ came in a low tone, as some voice had resounded the valley of Kakeshiyan mountains, as all the freshness of the air carried along with the blood and circulating through the body had begun to inaudibly call out her name, forgetting all the things in the world…
‘Sponsored by the university a group of twenty, boys and girls, has come to visit the ancient monuments and buildings in Delhi. We arrived here last night. Every moment of the night was transformed into a breathing portrait of your name. The whole night I was in the state of worshipping you and in the morning as the first ray of the sun touched the earth, I concluded my prayers with the final bow and without telling any body…’
‘Didn’t you tell anybody?’
‘No.’
‘Suppose someone set out in search of you.’
This was the first shock of the earthquake. Innocently, she was still touching my fingers. ‘Hina knows aboutyou, but not much.’
‘Who is Hina?’
‘A friend of mine…,’ she spoke gently. ‘This morning at ten we have to report to the police headquarters just to observe some formalities. But I am quite unable to go.’ She was shuddering. Her eyes
were closed. ‘I want to absorb within myself the feel of your presence.’ And then she added in a very low voice, ‘The purpose of my having opened my eyes in the world will have been fulfilled…’
Like a child she turned towards me, and then she began to investigate the things in the room. ‘Isn’t this your bed? You must be there in the creases of the sheet, isn’t it Sanyal? They bear your touches of the private hours too. I need have all the feel of your touches. Speakto me; won’t you?’
She promptly advanced and lay down on the bed. For a moment she closed her eyes… then got up… adjusted her dupatta. She was laughing. No; she was crying. ‘Well, I visited my home too. Lay in bed too, saw my room also. Make me stay here with you please. Don’t let me go..’
Somewhere, far away, the tune of Maulana Roomi’s flute was there in the air, ‘Listen to what the flute says…’ The flute had turned these moments into disastrous moments. My face was transformed into a stone image. Thinking of Tarana and the son outside, I felt myself to be overcast by the dark clouds of misgivings; and Mahak with her eyes almost closed, resting her head on my chest, was lost in some alien
world…perhaps I was trembling. As I gently reached my trembling hand onto her back, she seemed to get lost into my chest, my breaths. But misgivings were there, holding their question-spears, ‘If Mahak did not depart?... How should I ask Mahak to go? Her not going back may create a disastrous scene. The matter is concerned with a girl, come from Pakistan, and now missing. And, then?
The recollection of so many stories, ranging from terrorist activities to suicide bombing, deeply disturbed me during those eternal seconds. But, probably, it was not possible to tell anything to Mahak. And, the fact is — I did not want that Mahak should separate herself from my body. Her love, elevating itself from just an intoxication to the level of worship, was getting dissolved into my very existence. And then time came to a stand still… In a flash Mahak stood apart from me, turned to me with a stream of tears running through her stony eyes.
‘I am going away. I’ll trouble you no more. I can’t even see my love worried. But it was necessary to see you once, to touch you, to preserve the feel of your touch at my heart.’
Her face bore a strange smile — ‘Don’t ask me to stay… And yes, don’t have a misconception that I shall get back to Pakistan.’ She smiled gently, ‘If I can’t live in your city, I can die here at least.’
Coming forward she pressed her hot lips on mine, and then swiftly got out of the room. And before I was able to comprehend anything, I felt the earth shake under my feet. The notes of the flute were nearer…
‘Since you have made me drunk, don’t impose confines on me. Codes of religion are not operative on the insane.’
(A verse from Maulana Roomi)
It seemed as if she had left her everlasting ‘presence’ in the room. She seemed to be breathing still on the bed, in the garments, on every joint in the finger. I was shivering all through. Her departing words still rang in my ears:
‘I may not live in your city,
But I can die here, at least.’